A Sentimental Man
by Iorek Byrnison
Summary: It's hardest to fall in the dark, because you can't see the bottom. You can't know if you are closest to death or salvation. You can't know if the past has set out to kill you or if it's laid the path to a happier tomorrow. Shuichi wakes from a dream. SLASH Eiri/Shuichi Contains adult themes.


**A Sentimental Man**

_iorkbyrnison_

What did it feel like to die?

You were falling, falling endlessly and screaming as the wind wrapped around you, choking your body, suffocating you with invisible hands, burning your skin, and ripping your clothes.

Surely this was what it felt like to let go? Surely this was the pain of giving up when you knew you'd already lost the game you barely cared you were playing in the first place.

In reality you saw them and the dark. You heard their laughs and his voice. He smirking at you, a tug upwards of thins lips chuckling at your misfortune. It was like that, when they violated you. It was like that when they ripped apart everything that you took pride in and left you there on the ground to collect the pieces they'd destroyed like a child fearfully trying to place together the pieces of a vase he accidentally tipped over. But this time there was no mother to scold you. This time there was no boyfriend to hold you. This time all you had were bruises and tears and a shuffling step that led you all the way to your best friend's apartment.

He gazed at you in shock and concern, instantaneously knowing facts that you would rather keep secret. Hadn't you asked for it? Hadn't you begged for them to leave your lover out of the matter? If only you could protect him, hadn't you wanted that much? What was rape compared to your love's happiness even if that lover did not love you at all?

And you remembered that the next day it rained, because some time in the night you heard your friend leave the apartment, but you could not bring yourself to care too overly much. You released yourself to your dreams.

Here in the darkness it happens over and over again. Here in the darkness you beg and plead for different things, for different futures, and happier pasts. You wonder exactly what the past means to your lover and when you wake you find yourself disappointed he's not there.

Days later it's over. He's dead, the man who did this to you, the man who cursed you, who sought to destroy everything you were. He can't lay his hands upon your flesh, but only you know the truth. He's dugs his fingers into your brain like a tick upon the skin, like a festering growth within that threatens to burst from you into the world black and full of bile. He plays on repeat in your mind, endlessly on repeat like how you used to play your favorite songs over and over again until you couldn't stand to hear them anymore.

Your lover returns. Your band continues. Everyone agrees with the façade you place upon yourself, but everyone knows it wrong somehow.

And you fall in your dreams; fall so far and so long that you can't even remember the ledge from which you fell. You wonder if the tears upon your skin will scar, if the ache in your heart will fade. It's hardest to fall in the dark, because you can't see the bottom. You can't know if you are closest to death or salvation. You can't know if the past has set out to kill you or if it's laid the path to a happier tomorrow. Maybe that's what your dreams represent these days. Maybe you fall away from him to _him_. Or do you fall from _him_ to him?

You asked for it.

You asked for it.

He smirked in your face and you could hear the man behind you grunt in primal satisfaction, breaching you without care. Above that you hear the clicks of a camera. You hear the clicks that seal your new future.

Quit the band.

Quit your lover.

Quit your future.

It ain't gonna happen to spoiled goods like you.

You wake up in the night months later. Gasping mouthfuls of air into your lungs and you realize that you've switched one darkness for another. For a moment your room disorients you and then it comes back. There are clothes tossed on the floor and manga sitting on the nightstand on your side. You recognize the toned muscle of your lover lying beside you and the yellow of his eyes in the darkness. You probably screamed when you woke up, but you don't really remember. His eyes seem concerned anyway. After all, he would understand the best wouldn't he? Wouldn't he, even though he doesn't want to admit it?

You lean down to capture his lips. It's awkward and your ribs hurt from the strange position, but you persevere, needing desperately for someone to tell you it's all right, that the dreams are just terrors and that the man now beneath you forgives you for, because even though he assures you it wasn't your fault, you feel like it was. The guilt and shame never goes away.

You are thankful that your body is ready and once again grateful for the man in your arms, remembering fondly that night in the park all those months ago when the two of you met. This moment, one of many, was something you've worked hard to receive. This moment of tenderness as he takes you in the middle of the night reassures of love he doesn't necessarily vocalize, but always feels. He grunts, but it's not the same. He smirks, but it's not the same. His voice holds nothing but passion, never angry in moments like this. In moments like this he's so gentle it feels as if he's worshipping your skin instead of fucking you.

And when you come it's always spectacular, because he follows soon after. Then lying their immersed in each other you can feel the air in your lungs again and the wind burns against your skin were rubbed away by his questing tongue. It's no longer suffocating and you can feel _his_ fingers lose their grip on your mind at least for the night. You fall asleep again listening to your lover's heartbeat.

This time your dreams are safer.

-AN: So, I'm writing this at 3 in the morning. That's all I can say about that. I hope you guys like it. I know it's angsty, but that seems to be how my writing is developing itself these days. Unintentionally, of course. Read and Review!

Until next time!


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